Churning

These are stills from a video projection of performance on a wall sized drawing with sumi ink, pastels, acrylic, tempera and charcoal

Moved by my experience at a buddhist monastery in S. Korea, I wanted to capture what it feels like to try and meditate. The sound was recorded during morning gong call to prayer. The purpose of any sound whether it is the breath or the bell or the gong is to try and recenter and refocus. Using a time displacement filter on the video helped me express the sound reverb that is experienced in the mind. This work is very much about the mental landscape in the act of meditation.

Moved by my experience at buddhist monastery in S. Korea, I wanted to capture what it feels like to try and meditate. The sound was recorded during morning gong call to prayer. The purpose of any sound whether it is the breath or the bell or the gong is to try and recenter and refocus. Using a time displacement filter on the video helped me express the sound reverb that is experienced in the mind. This work is very much about the mental landscape in the act of meditation.

Accumulation

Accumulation is a tongue in cheek response to the age-old saying that “a rolling stone gathers no moss”. In contradiction, I believe our lives are a slow accumulation of experiences that impact and change us in incremental ways. Simple forms when multiplied become strong statements much like the cairns by the beach that personify balance and stability- We are shaped and strengthened by our experiences each and every day. In this body of work, I use collected silk and cotton sari fabric, manipulating them with dye and screen printing.

Entangled

Immigrant narratives, particularly that of women, are complex and rich. They are often interwoven with themes of family relationships, motherhood, domesticity, work and home. The prescribed roles of women in the their native culture usually get discarded, modified and edited in their new home. This narrative of change is rich with excitement and beauty, but also heartbreak and struggle. I used collected silk saris from Indian-American women to make this soft sculpture that expresses this complexity. Standing in for bodies, the tangle of sari strands speak to the complex richness of experiences by 6 Indian American women. The work is partnered with a 5.1 sound installation of edited audio from a directed conversation between these women while they share stories of first experiences in America, motherhood, loss, aging and the location of home.

Protective Footwear

Flexwax, turmeric powder, map tacks

My grandmother used to apply turmeric to our feet when my mother and I said goodbye after a visit. I still remember the feeling of cool turmeric paste on hot summer feet and the golden stain on my skin for days to come. Two protective materials, turmeric and wax come together in this work inspired by this childhood memory. Notions of travel and what the body remembers over long periods of time and immense change are expressed in this work.

Metamorphosis

Media: Acrylic mirror, hanji paper, intaglio prints, 2015.

For this site specific installation, I distill my memories of making paper at Daeseung Hanji Village in S.Korea. Set in a dream like valley, the experience at the paper factory was transformative. The sky reflected in the just-planted rice fields that surrounded the area and the milky vats of white paper pulp merge together in my mind. The transformation from bark to paper lingers in my memory as the ultimate representation of change that is constant in our lives. In an ironic twist on “metamorphosis”, I turn paper back to a ghost like form of mulberry branches and multiply them in reflecting pools of mirror. The surreal juxtaposition with the historic rooms of Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum plays with our understanding of place and location.

https://vimeo.com/144319014

Metamorphosis process

Tangled Web Series

Media:

Sumi Ink and screen prints on paper and maps that are then hand cut, screen prints and map tacks on wall.

About this work:

As a transplanted individual living between two cultures, I am constantly trying to identify where and how I fit into a place. This work is about this process of asking questions, resolving problems, mapping out solutions and the inner journey of locating oneself.

Latitude

Travel memories like any other memories are susceptible to change and loss. Photographs play a big role is their preservation or erasure as each time we remember due to photograph, we are also forgetting what is not photographed. The fragmentation and re-arranging of these memories in our mental landscape and order of things plays a big part in our experience of time and location.

Potentially Empty

Sunyata is the Buddhist concept of “emptiness”. Most often it is confused with the void or non-existence of matter. Sunyata actually addresses interconnectivity and eternity in Buddhist philosophy. His holiness the Dalai Lama refers to Sunyata as “the knowledge of the ultimate reality of all objects, material and phenomenal”. This concept acknowledges that the present state of all things is a result of its previous state and can be traced back to eternity. There is no beginning or end. Our time on earth is a brief interlude in a continuum. This artwork is my own search for meaning within this transience using a limited vocabulary such as the “vessel” and the perceptive hand.

Potentially Empty

Sunyata is the Buddhist concept of “emptiness”. Most often it is confused with the void or non-existence of matter. Sunyata actually addresses interconnectivity and eternity in Buddhist philosophy. His holiness the Dalai Lama refers to Sunyata as “the knowledge of the ultimate reality of all objects, material and phenomenal”. This concept acknowledges that the present state of all things is a result of its previous state and can be traced back to eternity. There is no beginning or end. Our time on earth is a brief interlude in a continuum. This artwork is my own search for meaning within this transience using a limited vocabulary.

Never-ending Line II and III

Media:

White sand (Rangoli powder) on canvas mounted on floor, 5'X5'

Ephemeral threshold drawings have been made by women for hundreds of years in various parts of India. They are called rangoli, kolam, muggu, alpana etc. depending on the location. These ritual drawings can be highly mathematical, symmetric and intricate. Handed down over generations purely through observation and expansion, the making of these drawings has survived immense changes in culture and location. I use this form to talk about how one can find a continuum within change and recognize the valueofan embodied knowledge handed down through our lineage. I chose to visualize mitochondrial DNA, a significant part of the human genome that is solely inherited from the mother. Mitochondria generates the energy driving all life and has been transmitted for millions of years exclusively through women.

Touch

Photopolymer intaglio print, graphite drawing

Using simplicity of form and minimal number of materials, I explore the ephemeral in this series. Transience and elusive meaning are given form in the graphite lines that are visible and invisible depending on the light and the angle of the viewer. The visceral nature of touch and the potential of what our skin can feel and understand is distilled in this work. How can one represent the cool breeze on a warm summer evening or the silkiness of a flower petal on your cheek? What about the moments that take our breath away and we are grasping for words before the thought disappears forever? How does one address the ineffable? This is an ongoing series that explores these concepts.

Excavation

Articulating the liminal nature of how it feels to exist between two cultures is an ongoing process of discovery. I use letters from the English and Telugu alphabet, combine them in a screen print and hand cut around them, "excavating" the space in-between. Hung delicately suspended on wire, they cast shadows on the wall, swaying and moving with the slightest breeze.